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When the brothers of Joseph saw that their father was dead, they said, What if Joseph hates us and certainly returns to us all the evil we dealt to him (v 15). Why do we do this to ourselves?  For decades, the sons of Israel had lived with a terrible secret, harboring unforgiveness and unrepentance. They had betrayed their brother Joseph. ... They had plotted his murder. ... They had stripped him of his robe of righteousness. ... They had cast him into a waterless pit. ... Then, after discovering that Joseph had been enslaved, they covered up all their transgression, iniquity, and sin by leading their father to believe that Joseph had been killed by wild animals. They had become liars, betrayers, slanderers, gossipers, and as Saint John tells us, murderers, because he who hates his brother is a murderer (1 Jn 3:15). And they tried to convince themselves that living in sin was a good thing. They told themselves that Joseph was arrogant: He’s a little dreamer, they said (Gen 37:19)....

In our Gospel reading for this Third Sunday after Trinity, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51), where all things written about the Son of Man will be fulfilled (18:31). The opposition of the scribes and Pharisees has increased markedly. They have begun challenging him, interrogating him (11:53), scrutinizing his every Word, hoping to find a way to bring him down (14:1). Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to [Jesus] to hear him (v 1), because he invites all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge that we need the forgiveness of sins every day.  When the scribes and Pharisees see this, Jesus tells them a series of parables about a wedding feast (14:7-14), about the invitation to the great supper (14:15-24), and about the lost and the found (vv 1-32). The repetition of teaching assures sinners who desire to be hearers of the Word that the messianic feast is a divine necessity. He longs to exalt you. He longs to fill every seat in his house. He longs to...

Give to the wise one, and he will be wiser still. Teach a righteous one, and he will increase in learning. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of YHWH, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (vv 9-10). So concludes our reading from Proverbs. 5. Virtually every society and culture of our world uses proverbs. I am sure you know a number of them, in particular: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. ... Better late than never. ... Actions speak louder than words. ... And of course, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the LORD (v 10). The last of these four is from our reading in the Book of Proverbs. Don’t ask me where the first three came from. ... They aren’t Biblical.  King Solomon is said to have written 3,000 proverbs, including many of those in the book of Proverbs itself. We know that Agur, son of Jakeh, and King Lemuel, which may be a pseudonym for King Hezekiah, wrote chapters 30 and 31. But among mere men, no one was wiser than Solomon. In 1 Kings 3, w...